What Are You Listening To?

[SteveO]

I was talking to an interesting fella yesterday and he said he listens to The Bradenburg Concertos by Bach but you just have to listen to it while partaking in marywanna! I think I will listen to it on the straight and narrow again! I really don't want to get pizza all over the computer screen! Such great music! It amazes me how great these cats were!

[video=youtube;x8AEGLAyMOc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=x8AEGLAyMOc[/video]

[Afsal]

[video]https://youtu.be/A_Mh6yl0AGQ[/video]


Beethoven 9th Symphony, Finale - the Choral Symphony - The Ode to Joy

Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, byname the Choral Symphony, Beethoven, Ludwig van: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Opus 125 (Choral)orchestral work in four movements by Ludwig van Beethoven, remarkable in its day not only for its grandness of scale but especially for its final movement, which includes a full chorus and vocal soloists who sing a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy”). The work was Beethoven’s final complete symphony, and it represents an important stylistic bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods of Western music history. Symphony No. 9 premiered on May 7, 1824, in Vienna, to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic audience, and it is widely viewed as Beethoven’s greatest composition.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was ultimately more than three decades in the making. Schiller’s popular “Ode to Joy” was published in 1785, and it is possible that Beethoven made his first of multiple attempts to set it to music in the early 1790s. He clearly revisited the poem in 1808 and 1811, as his notebooks include numerous remarks regarding possible settings. In 1812 Beethoven determined to place his setting of “Ode to Joy” within a grand symphony.

Despite some sharp initial critique of the work, Symphony No. 9 has withstood the test of time and, indeed, has made its mark. In the world of popular culture, the symphony’s menacing second movement in brisk waltz time provided a backdrop for some of the most tense and twisted moments in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s psycho-thriller novel A Clockwork Orange (1962). The choral fourth movement accompanies a triumphant soccer (football) scene in Peter Weir’s film Dead Poets Society (1989). In the realm of technology, the audio capacity of the compact disc was set at 74 minutes in the early 1980s, purportedly to accommodate a complete recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

Symphony No. 9 has also been used to mark monumental public events, among the most moving of which took place on Christmas Day 1989 in Berlin. There, in the first concert since the demolition of the Berlin Wall just a few weeks earlier, American conductor Leonard Bernstein led a group of musicians from both the eastern and western sides of the city in a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with a small but significant alteration: in the “Ode to Joy” the word Freude was replaced with Freiheit (“freedom”). A performance of the choral finale of the symphony—with simultaneous global participation via satellite—brought the opening ceremony of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, to a powerful close.

- Betsy Schwarm (Betsy Schwarm is a music historian based in Colorado. She serves on the music faculty of Metropolitan State University of Denver, and gives pre-performance talks for Opera Colorado and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.)

[Afsal]

[video]https://youtu.be/A_Mh6yl0AGQ[/video]

https://youtu.be/A_Mh6yl0AGQ


Beethoven 9th Symphony, Finale - the Choral Symphony - The Ode to Joy

:violin::violin::violin::violin::violin::violin::v iolin::violin::violin::violin:

[Music Head]

from the cd room



you didn't think I had any classical did you?
I have probably a dozen or so
it's all good

[video=youtube;QlCzpkpQ3qs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlCzpkpQ3qs[/video]

[Ruby]

Daniel Hope - Spheres



This is lifted directly from his website - "When I was a boy, the only thing which captivated me as much as music was the night sky. At the age of eight I bought my first telescope and would spend hours gazing at the moon and stars. I remember thinking what it must have been like when man first realized that we were only a very small part of the overall picture.

When I was in my teens, Yehudi Menuhin, who was at work on his project The Music of Man, introduced me to the great astronomer Carl Sagan. It was Sagan who first opened my eyes to the magnitude of the universe, and essentially to the notion of “music of the spheres”.

In this album my idea was to bring together music and time, including works by composers from different centuries who might perhaps not always be found in the same “galaxy” but yet are united by the age-old question: is there anything out there?

It was probably Pythagoras who first expounded the idea that universal harmony may be rooted in mathematics, after his chance discovery that the pitch of a musical note depends upon the length of the string which produces it. But can something as magical and inexplicable as music ever be explained merely by a mathematical formula? Equally, when we think of space or the planets, do we hear any kind of sound associated with them, major or minor, or is it always mute? Certainly many composers envisaged the former. It is well known that before completing The Creation Haydn consulted the British astronomer William Herschel and viewed the heavens through his telescope. Josef Strauss’s waltz Sphärenklänge provided a romantic view of the heavens, while Philip Glass – whose Echorus is, incidentally, a homage to Yehudi Menuhin – has long been fascinated by such conundrums as whether music would sound higher or lower at the edge of a black hole. And scholars today are still trying to unearth and justify some of the numerological mysteries within J. S. Bach’s music, from the obvious use of the B–A–C–H motif to the more subtle presence of elements centering on the number three, standing for the Holy Trinity.

So, is there anything out there? I like to think so . . ."

I'm absolutely loving this, and right now two pieces composed by Ludovico Einaudi have made a great impression ... this is one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmV6dyEi430

The other - "Passaggio"

[video=youtube;I3A08K9xRpI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3A08K9xRpI[/video]

[CRAZY-HORSE]

FREDDIE MERCURY & MONTSERRAT CABALLE "Barcelona" cd, 1988

this album stats........#15 UK...#13 NZ...#19 AU
singles:
"Barcelona"..............#8 UK...#3 AU
"the golden boy".......#86 UK
"how can I go on" B/W
"guide me home".....#95 UK

a strange pairing indeed....
one of rock music's greatest vocalists and performers coming together with an opera star....!
this came about when Mercury went to see a Pavarotti show in London a couple of years previous to this album...
he was blown away by Caballe's vocals and sent a message saying he would like to record with her, and the rest is
history...
all tracks on here were written by Mercury, all tracks are duets between the two of them, some feature more of Freddie
others more of Caballe.
some of them sound like they could have been Queen ballads, but whatever,
I think it works to a degree, but opera is not a genre of music I really enjoy or even know anything about,'
I like half the album and dislike half of it purely because I cannot understand a word she sings without looking at the
lyric sheet.

I LIKE THIS ALBUM

worst track: exercise in free love
best track: how can I go on

[video=youtube;akdAvg8SO1A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akdAvg8SO1A[/video]

tracks:

1...Barcelona ***
2...La Japonaise *
3...the fallen priest **
4...ensueno *
5...the golden boy **
6...guide me home **
7...how can I go on ***
8...exercises in free love *
9...overtime picante *

3s=2
2s=3
1s=4

rating: 1.7

[Ruby]

A Suite of Gods – Rick Wakeman and Ramon Remedios

This is from Rick Wakeman’s set of material in a new age style, and next up after Zodiaque. It’s not strictly operatic, nor is it classical – there’s too much of a crossover thing happening for that, but it fits here more than in any other category, IMHO and the singing is operatic/classical.

I think that these two artists complement one another very nicely. Remedios is no Pavarotti, but he has a good, true, strong tenor and the biggest bonus is that it’s all sung in English so understandable for those of us who don’t know much else! There’s no ‘star’ here – it’s a good balance of music and song. Wakeman uses the Korg synthesizer throughout the album, and the vocals, while decisive, are not overpowering.

It’s a concept album of sorts, the Greek and Roman gods of mythology being the main cast of characters and their tracks seem to describe them quite well. I like it a lot – especially the ode to Ulysses …. (Possibly something to do with the fact that I’m reading about Homer at the moment!) …

[video=youtube;TWjjW-Gzmb0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWjjW-Gzmb0[/video]

[Jerome]

The Dream of Gerontius - Sir Edward Elgar. Given to me by a friend many, many moons ago. Stunning piece.

[Oceansoul]

Akiko Suwanai - Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto

Wow, it's just...lovely and moving. YouTube doesn't have the best quality of it, but here it is anyway: [video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_qd-9wD6qA[/video]

[Ruby]

Exquisite piece - the Andante from Shostakovitch's Piano Concerto No 2 ...

[video=youtube;vwsFrFOYyMk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsFrFOYyMk[/video]